Now, Maaloula "is a ghost town. Where is President Obama to see what befallen on us?" asked the man.Another resident who fled the village of 3,000 inhabitants earlier in the day said in a telephone interview that Assad's forces deployed on the outskirts of the village, while gunmen inside refused to allow anybody in.
He said the gunmen declined to allow fleeing people to take five dead bodies out of the village with them.
He said one of the churches, called Demyanos, had been torched and that gunmen stormed into two other churches and robbed them.
Most of the gunmen are foreigners, he said, adding that he heard different dialects, mainly of Tunisians, Libyans, Moroccans and Chechens.
Another resident, a Christian man, said he saw militants forcing some Christian residents to convert to Islam. "I saw the militants grabbing five villagers Wednesday and threatening them (saying): 'Either you convert to Islam, or you will be beheaded,'" he said.
The two other residents said they heard about the conversions, but did not see them. All three spoke on condition of anonymity out of fears of retaliation. A Christian woman who spoke to the AP on Thursday also said there were reports that militants threatened villagers with death if they did not convert.
Observe: the so-called rebels are bandits from all over the Maghreb, and from Chechnya. This is not even a genuine uprising, it is foreign aggression. The Syrian government is waging a just defensive war.
Umm, just what was the American ambassador doing in Benghazi?
Sounds like a staging area for a little foreign adventure...
Exactly. Just as the Serbs tried to do.